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Girl on the Magazine Cover, The

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"THIS PICTURE SHOWS HOW PROFESSIONAL MODELS -- BEAUTIFUL GIRLS -- ARE USED IN MAKING UP MAGAZINE COVERS. A CHEVROLET IS SHOWN ON THE MAGAZINE COVER, EMPHASIZING ITS BEAUTY."


Ken Smith sez: This purports to be a film about the workings of a big city model agency, but it's really just an excuse for Jam Handy to pose pretty girls around a '41 Chevrolet. Narrated by Walter O'Keefe (see Three Smart Daughters) who's much too wisecracking, whining and beligerent to be believed. The camera becomes the unseen Walter, and dwells lovingly on the "babes," "honeys" and "tasty tidbits" while Walter utters lines such as "Boy, what a set of props!" The excellent visual gimmickry in this film almost makes you overlook its rampant sexism, but nothing can get out of the way of Walter's annoying chatter.
This late entry in Chevrolet's Direct Mass Selling series comes closer to an actual advertisement for Chevrolet than its predecessors. Like other films in the series, it ostensibly exposes technology's inner workings: here, the tricks of the advertising photography trade. The Jam Handy organization, which shot thousands of still photographs every year, explains how effects and artifices are achieved, treating members of the mass market as media insiders. Most interesting and provocative about this film, though, is the way it
equates cars with women. Feature by feature, narrator Walter O'Keefe acidly, and in the most snide and demeaning terms, compares the parts of automobiles with those of professional models. At film's end the features combine in a wonderful optical effect, and we see a young woman behind the wheel of a Chevrolet. For years cars have been endowed with gender characteristics, more often than not those of girls or women. Auto design is often presented in feminized terms, and the relationship between male drivers and their
vehicles has been eroticized. The Girl on the Magazine Cover makes reference to this history, but in a leering, caricatured manner. It is certainly not designed to sell Chevies to women. Walter O'Keefe, a radio personality well known to prewar audiences, worked with Jam Handy on other occasions (his voice is featured on the two Singer Company Minute Movies on this disc). According to a newspaper story,
his wife sued him for divorce on the grounds of "extreme cruelty."

CHEVROLET ADVERTISING AUTOMOBILES TRANSPORTATION MODELS ACTRESSES WOMEN SEX ROLES NARRATORS VOICEOVERS PHOTOGRAPHY MEDIA COMMUNICATIONS HUMOR BACKDROPS SETS WIPES MAGAZINES STUDIOS LIGHTS FEET SHOES STEERING WHEELS CAMERAS
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